War with Russia

“So what?” you may say. Of course, it will be grim for the people of the Baltic States and Poland, “faraway countries of which we know little”—to paraphrase the UK’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 when shying away from facing up to Nazi aggression towards those countries. But will it really affect us in the US and Western Europe if NATO is rendered impotent and we are unable to protect the Baltic States and Poland from Russia?

The answer to that is a resounding, “Yes.”

First, the most terrifying scenario is that, without strong conventional deterrence—tanks, planes, artillery, ships, and boots on the ground—the only remaining line of defense for a NATO facing imminent military defeat is nuclear weapons.

The growing weakness of the West’s conventional forces means that the only way Russia can be deterred or defeated is by the threat or use of nuclear weapons. However, the consequence of the release of intercontinental ballistic missiles on Russia would be Armageddon; a result so terrible that the Russian president will calculate that the US, UK (despite the strong statement of intent from UK’s new Prime Minister Theresa May that she would have no hesitation ordering the use of nuclear weapons), and France—the only nuclear-armed states of NATO—would never risk the near total destruction of human civilization in the US and Europe for the sake of three small Baltic states.

And he is probably right. Which is why he would get away with it.

This is why maintaining an effective conventional deterrent—military forces that can fight and hold off the Russians if they attack, but above all to persuade them not to attack in the first place—is critical. It is only by having strong conventional forces that we can hope to ensure there is never a need to use that final option: nuclear weapons. Put another way, weak conventional forces make the use of nuclear weapons as a last, desperate line of defense very much more likely.

Even without the release of nuclear weapons, if we do have to fight a conventional war, prepare yourself for appalling casualties. These would be infinitely greater than anything suffered in recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There could well be casualties on a Second World War level of horror. Be under no illusion whatsoever: war has a grim and uncontrollable logic of its own. Once the first bombs and missiles are launched, who can say where the next lot will end up landing? If we are hitting Russians, why should New York, Washington, London, Berlin, Paris, or Warsaw not end up being targeted in return?

It does not need Russian soldiers marching though Berlin and Paris for the world as we know it to cease to exist. A militarily victorious Russia, able to dictate to a defeated Europe and NATO from the end of a barrel as to exactly what will and what will not be acceptable to them, will be enough for life as we now know it in the West to come to a very abrupt end. NATO will collapse and transatlantic, and therefore American, security will be threatened. The President will have achieved his aim of destroying NATO, the alliance of free, democratic countries he sees as standing between him and a return to Russian great power status.

“To the victor the spoils.” Always.

As Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the DSACEUR, I sat in the council meetings with defense ministers and the decision makers of NATO; I was part of the discussions and decisions on how force should be deployed, and I walked the corridors of power in NATO HQ Brussels, the White House, No. 10 Downing Street, and the Pentagon. In this book I will take you into those corridors as the politicians agonize over whether to send in Special Forces, order air strikes, or deploy armies and navies.

I will show you, based on my personal experience of NATO’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya, the posturing, the vanity, the political cynicism, and the moral cowardice which all too often characterize those decisions. I will also highlight the occasional statesmanship and how the leadership and moral courage of one individual of stature can change the course of history. I know, too, the reality of combat, so I will show you how decisions taken at the highest levels affect the men and women who fight the battles and who, together with innocent civilians, pay the price of war.

When I was DSACEUR, I led exercises in which we war-gamed these scenarios, based on our own capabilities and what we knew about our enemies. What follows in this book represents one such, entirely feasible, scenario, however unimaginably awful it may seem. But just because something is unimaginably awful to Western political leaders, that does not mean it is not considered a viable option by the Russians.